The men sound as though they are trying to offer suggestions.

"No, please, nothing so complicated. But tell me"-Muchami turns to the man whose tale of a sordid family feud had been interrupted-" how the sisters of the dead boy took revenge."

"An open window." It's Gopalan who hits on this. "There are bars-you throw the bundle in, yes, Muchami? You never said you didn't have keys to the courtyard, right, and from there you go to the garden..."

The men need no further contribution from Muchami; they can continue debating the merits and drawbacks of the house safe system on their own.

In this discussion, one of their number thinks he recognizes an opportunity.

Cunjusamy's father had been a ruthless usurer and had acc.u.mulated a substantial fortune. Cunjusamy inherited his father's values but none of his skill. His debtors take advantage: they don't pay interest; they claim early to have paid off their p.a.w.ns; they carry home collateral that is not their own. His once-considerable inheritance is dwindling.

He waits a month, long after everyone in the marketplace has ceased even to think about the house safe. Then he waits for a night when the moon is half full-half light so he can see, half dark so he cannot be easily seen-and walks along the ca.n.a.l behind the Brahmin quarter until he reaches Sivakami's house.

Cunjusamy tried and failed to be subtle in his inquiries regarding Muchami's methods, and so Muchami had, for some time, been watching Cunjusamy's house. When he sees the moneylender leave his house in the dead of night, waving an iron spike, Muchami goes to the houses of several men, including one in Cunjusamy's close circle, he has enlisted for this purpose, wakes them and goes to Sivakami's house, expecting to find Cunjusamy there.

He finds Cunjusamy heading out of the courtyard.

Muchami inquires solicitously, "Going somewhere?"

"Yes. Home," Cunjusamy replies officiously and tries to push past, but the labourers are much more solid than the doors were, and he is prevented.

Muchami takes a step toward him and asks, "Find anything interesting ?"

"Sure, your four policemen," Cunjusamy retorts and turns on his supposed friend accusingly. "So no one's guarding the house at night, is it? Muchami's just tossing the money in and letting the locked house keep it safe, is it? Huh?"

The friend looks at him like he's crazy. "All anyone said was what they knew. Anyway, were we talking so you could come here and steal? From a widow?"

"Oh, she's just h.o.a.rding."

Muchami draws himself up to his full five feet three inches and spits back, "She needs every paisa."

"Oh, is that how it is? Then how can she afford four policemen every night? Do policemen work for free now?"

"What are you talking about?"

"The policemen looking after Sivakami Amma's money."

Muchami stares at him for a moment, then looks at the other men and shrugs. Cunjusamy thrusts out his iron spike and parts the human doors. "Lock up, will you?"

There doesn't seem to be much reason to stay. Muchami does a quick inspection of the courtyard and notices a hole in the weather-smoothed planks of the kitchen door. He points to it and barks, "Are you responsible for this?"

"So small, and you are worried about it? You can hardly see it. I put a hole in each door so I could see if anyone was inside, keeping watch. Good thing I did, or I would have played right into the policemen's hands."

Muchami has finally had enough. "What are you talking about? She couldn't afford policemen, to pay them and bribe them and all other costs."

Cunjusamy, who had been lingering, reluctant to step back out into the dark alone, becomes self-righteous. "Are you calling me a liar?

"What should I call you? A thief?"

"Did I take one paisa?" Cunjusamy steps back into the centre of the courtyard, jabbing his finger at Muchami. "Not one!"

Muchami matches him, jab for jab. "You would have, except the policemen stopped you."

"You just said there were no policemen!"

"There aren't any policemen! Yes, I am calling you a liar! And a thief! Liar! Thief!"

Muchami had mentioned his suspicions to Murthy, asking him, also, to keep an eye out for nocturnal activity. Now that neighbour comes over, attracted by the noise, and starts shouting at Cunjusamy to cover his own negligence, alerting still other neighbours who had heard rumours of Cunjusamy's interest through one source or another. Only the witch's husband, who has problems of his own and therefore pays little attention to gossip, is surprised to look down from his roof into Sivakami's courtyard and see a bulky rich fellow and a servant shouting at each other.

Finally Muchami humbly offers a decision.

"No action can really be taken, because no robbery occurred. I don't think there are policemen guarding the house, because I would have known, and because someone would have seen them coming and going. Besides, where are they now? No one but Sivakami Amma has a key to the house. So, I don't know what happened, but I will inform her and find out what she wants to do."

They all file off into the night, still berating Cunjusamy, who refuses to look at anyone and instead scans the sky for owls and waves his iron spike at darting shadows.

The next morning, Muchami goes to the courthouse veranda and has the scribe write a letter to Sivakami. Murthy had offered to write it, but Muchami insisted he would get it done He need not explain much since everyone knows the story, which has circulated the village several times already, gathering momentum, dust, branches and extra leaves at every turn. If anything, he finds he has to limit the scribe to the details he himself knows. "I was there!" he yells at the man, who says he's only trying to help. "I'm the one in charge," Muchami replies loudly. He is worthy of this responsibility, he tells himself. He is sick over how close his mistress came to losing what was in his charge to protect.

Even as the letter is posted, Sivakami is already on her way to Cholapatti. Early that morning, during her brief sleep, she dreamt of the black stone Ramar that dominated her main hall at home. In the dream, she was doing puja for the G.o.ds. But when she anointed each of their foreheads with sandalwood paste, as she had every morning of her life in that house, each turned to sandalwood. Then she garlanded each with roses and each turned to silver. And when she held the oil lamp aloft to reveal their features more brightly, each turned to gold. But when she finished, she began to pack her trunk, to leave for her father's house, and the Ramar turned to khaki cloth and she picked each one up, shook it out and folded it and packed it away in her trunk.

She woke, awash in guilt and homesickness. She must return and do a puja for that Ramar, she thought, she has been neglecting it, the Ramar that had been her responsibility as wife and mistress. She departed for Cholapatti the same morning, with an adolescent nephew for an escort.

It is early evening when they arrive, expecting no one since no one is expecting them. They walk in the failing light from the train station at Kulithalai, Sivakami as excited as her nephew is bored. When they pa.s.s the market stalls that proceed from the roundabout, someone calls out and runs toward them: Annam's servant girl. She is round-eyed and panting. "Oh, Amma, Amma, you have come so quickly. You got Muchami's letter, already?"

Sivakami bypa.s.ses puzzlement and goes straight for concern. "What's happened?"

At this sign of trouble, her nephew looks a little more interested. The girl stretches out the drama. "Didn't Muchami tell you?"

A few more people gather, the men hanging back a little and not acknowledging Sivakami out of respect, making Sivakami even more aware of her discomfort at being in public. She has to know what happened, though, and tries to hear the men's loudly muttered contributions from four feet away. The servant girl holds her ground, not to be robbed of this juicy revelation. "Well..."

But then, a shout: Muchami is coming. Everyone bursts into babble and the servant girl is drowned out. She pulls back to pout silently as the crowd parts to admit Muchami to the inner circle. "Amma, you didn't get my letter already, Amma?"

"What letter? You often send me letters. What's going on?"

"Nothing really bad happened, Amma, it would have, but it didn't..." Muchami would prefer she had read it. He doesn't want to see her disappointed with him. "And what it was, was-you know Cunjusamy, the gundu, gundu, whose father was Kandan?" whose father was Kandan?"

"Yes, yes."

"He ... tried to get at the money, your money, that's in the hall."

Everyone around them begins to break in and augment. "He made holes around each window, pulled out all the windows and climbed in..."

"Muchami brought the police in through the front door, while Cunjusamy was coming in through the back."

"Muchami and the labourers had dressed up like policemen..."

"He used witchcraft to go in through itty-bitty holes in the doors, without opening the locks..."

Muchami shushes the thousand and one well-meaning informants and asks if Sivakami wants to wait for him to get the bullock cart. When she insists on walking, he follows at a discreet distance. They encounter several Brahmin men on the cart path, but they pretend not to see her, exposed as she is by the necessities of modern travel.

At home, Muchami explains what he knows, showing her the holes by the light of kerosene lanterns. He doesn't know how the invented story about the policemen served Cunjusamy's motives. Maybe he heard Muchami coming and decided to make a dash but didn't want to admit it.

Sivakami asks Muchami how Cunjusamy knew about how the money was kept. He explains fully, undefensively, the scene and what he understands, his voice wobbly with shame: Cunjusamy bored a hole in each door from the courtyard to the main hall, not knowing if Muchami or someone else might be sleeping there. Finding no one, he broke through, but stopped before he entered the main hall and effected the robbery, because, he said, Sivakami had four policemen guarding the riches. She asks how he happened to catch Cunjusamy in the act. In telling her, he regains a little pride.

The next morning at four, he is waiting, as he did before, behind Murthy and Rukmini's house, where she and her nephew are staying, to escort her to the Kaveri River for her bath. She goes, fighting waves of nostalgia, forcing herself not to pretend she has just awoken from her late husband's arms. On her way back to her house, she stops in at the roadside temple, as used to be her habit.

Back at the house, she does a long, sincere puja to the Ramar. At about eight o'clock, she asks Muchami to tell her once more what happened, so she can examine the house by the light of day. She finds it essentially in order. Then she and Muchami count the money, using his letters, which she has brought. All acc.u.mulated wealth is present and accounted for, not a paisa short. Muchami isn't looking for compliments and Sivakami doesn't pay any, but they are in the air: Muchami can both count and be counted on. After counting out Muchami's salary, plus a little bonus, miscellaneous retaining fees-for the scribe, for example, and the two old couples she supports-they roll the coins in rags torn from Hanumarathnam's old dhotis and Sivakami deposits the rolls tidily in the Dindigul safe.

Just as she finishes, Chinnarathnam, Hanumarathnam's old friend from up the road, stops in to inquire whether she needs any a.s.sistance in dealing with this intrusion. She asks Muchami-whose proximity to Sivakami is never questioned by anyone, including her-to give Chinnarathnam a storytelling tour of the house while she sequesters herself in the room under the stairs. Even were Sivakami still married, she would not talk to him directly, but now that she is widowed, her orthodoxy dictates that she not even permit this male non-relative to see her. When they have finished and gone back out to the vestibule, she emerges to stand half behind the door to the main hall, and talks to the concerned neighbour through Muchami.

Since no money was taken, Sivakami is inclined to do nothing, but Chinnarathnam advises that it would not be a bad thing to engineer a little something to discourage Cunjusamy, or others like him, from trying such a stunt again. Chinnarathnam is friends with the police commissioner at Kulithalai, and could request that someone from the police interview Cunjusamy. He doesn't have to be charged with anything, even though what he has done can't be particularly legal.

Sivakami accepts the advice, asking that Chinnarathnam invite Murthy to come along. Hanumarathnam's cousin has looked in several times with stalwart offers of help, making Sivakami feel there was nothing in particular he felt he could do. Her nephew also perks up at the suggestion of police involvement and, late that afternoon, Muchami, Murthy and the nephew call on Chinnarathnam and they, under escort of a keen-looking young officer, proceed to Cunjusamy's house. As per Chinnarathnam's suggestion, they make themselves seen. Everyone they pa.s.s gawks and squawks. No one asks where they're going.

The mission finds Cunjusamy on his veranda, popping peanut sweets in his mouth and staring into s.p.a.ce. Muchami later imitates him when he re-enacts the story for Sivakami's benefit: Cunjusamy's eyes look nearly as empty as the sockets of the enormous deer skull on the wall above him; in fact, the long-dead deer looks more perceptive. The party is almost at his step before he jumps up and chokes. He spits the offending morsel past them onto the road and recovers a little of his dignity, the sort that owes less to character than to bulk. He hesitates a moment, before deciding on belligerence as the only available avenue. "What do you want?" he shouts.

They feel his hot, peanutty breath whoosh past them, and the nephew edges behind Muchami. Chinnarathnam replies, "The facts. Just the facts."

The policeman steps forward and explains, "We just want to get to the bottom of this. Won't you come along, sir?"

"I didn't take anything!" Cunjusamy's chins wag indignantly.

Murthy steps forward with a finger raised, saying, "Aha!" while Chinnarathnam muses, "That's what's so curious."

The policeman gracefully gestures Cunjusamy to precede them into the street, also glancing pointedly at his billy stick. Cunjusamy marches out, still spluttering. All of the village is quiet before them, and noisy in their wake.

At Sivakami's house, they come into the main hall, where Cunjusamy is waved to a bench. Sivakami positions herself in the pantry to witness. The policeman pulls a notepad from his breast pocket and paces to and fro, then stops and stoops in a single action, his nose level with Cunjusamy's, his eyebrows beetled penetratingly. He booms, "Where were you on the night of ?"

Cunjusamy's voice is a full octave higher than normal. "Home! Asleep!"

"All night?"

"I can't remember!"

The policeman, who is young and smartly turned out, wheels away. He walks along the bench to the end of the hall. Facing the door, he pulls out his billy stick and whacks the bench on the far end of which Cunjusamy is quivering. It cracks down the entire length of its grain. The policeman sighs, regains his composure, turns around and flips to the next page of his pad. "Can you remember yet?"

Cunjusamy starts to blubber. "I told them, I told them everything, I am not a wealthy man. I know I have a big house, but I have a big family, and so many people are not paying me, and..."

Chinnarathnam leans forward. "You made a hole in each door."

Cunjusamy answers through boo-hoos, "Yes."

"You picked the lock. With a pin?" the policeman asks.

"Yes."

"You went through three doors, then made a hole in the door to the main hall, then you didn't go in and didn't steal the money."

"Yes. No! I mean, no. I mean..."

"What I said was right?" the officer says.

"Yes."

"Why didn't you steal the money?"

"I told them, it was the policemen. Four policemen, posed, like a picture, three standing, one kneeling, like, like..." Cunjusamy casts around. "Like that!" He points to the Ramar.

Muchami has backed up against the eastern wall of the house so that he alone can see both Sivakami and the interrogation. He looks at her; she wags her head: the house will be safe, not because of policemen or neighbours, but because her G.o.ds are protecting her.

Muchami clears his throat. "Sir, thank you, sir. Amma is satisfied that he won't do it again."

The police officer frowns. "Are you sure? This blackguard..."

Muchami looks to Sivakami again, and she wags her head more definitively.

"Sir, yes, that's enough, sir." Muchami, too, is wagging his head vigorously. "Please, sir, keep the notes, yes, everything, but that is enough, sir. The house will be safe."

Murthy, too, wags his head as though satisfied. Chinnarathnam, too, concedes. It seems a bit abrupt, but he can't dispute her judgment. He glances quizzically at the Ramar and, on their way back along the Brahmin quarter, asks Muchami what he thinks happened. The servant echoes Sivakami's thought: the policemen's appearance is a miracle.

The nephew, who had to suppress a cheer when the billy stick broke the bench, is disappointed that the interview is so brief. He points at Cunjusamy: "And don't you forget it, fatso."

Cunjusamy sneers and pulls back his hand as if to strike. The nephew insolently turns and saunters after the policeman. By the time they reach the main road into Kulithalai, he has asked three times to carry the billy stick.

High Time 1907.

WHEN THANGAM COMPLETES HER FIRST SEVEN YEARS, Sivakami's family starts making noises on the subject of the girl's marriage. Sivakami's father begins and Kamu, her eldest sister-in-law, nods her lip-pursed agreement. Their strong opinion (stronger for being not at all original) is that it is high time. Kamu's husband, Sambu, a roomy, sedentary man, is less enthusiastic than he should be-arranging a wedding is a lot of work and all that work is the brothers'. Their father, since his wife's death, has largely withdrawn from family life and obligations. The middle son, Venketu, who is unnaturally energetic, annoys his elder brother with ambitious proclamations about the match they will make their niece.

With respectful comments on their brother-in-law's renown as an astrologer, they request Thangam's horoscope. Sivakami goes to her trunk, which now contains only the palm-leaf bundles and the carved sandalwood box. She had aired the clothes out on arrival, set them on their allotted shelf with her Ramayana and not opened the trunk since. Now she lifts out the long, slim box and sets it on the floor in front of her.

She bends to breathe the ancient scent-rich, antiseptic, vaguely obscene-of the sandal tree's protected parts, the heartwood and roots. She is trembling a little with an old, familiar flush of resentment at her responsibilities: she has never opened the box, inside which are the leaves whose graven words have caused her loneliness. In the scent is every morning, when her husband ground a block of sandal against a dampened black stone to make a paste, to anoint the foreheads of their G.o.ds and each other and their children. It is the scent of her husband's forehead when she bent over hi0.as he slept.

Sivakami exhales and straightens, and as she does so, her shoulder blades, which had spread slightly, lock back into place. The breath of good memory has steadied her to open the box. As she lifts the lid, she feels an icy breeze escape and curl around the back of her neck. Thangam's horoscope is on top. Sivakami lifts it out and shuts the box without looking farther. She doesn't think until later that Vairum's would have logically been in that place, since he was born after Thangam. Hanumarathnam must have put Vairum's beneath their daughter's. He would have known that Thangam's marriage would come before their son's, and he must have realized that if Sivakami, not he, was opening the box, she would have reason not to want to see Vairum's horoscope.

The brothers take the palm leaves to the corner astrologer. He quacks over them briefly, threads a silver stylus through the hole in his index fingernail and doodles out his p.r.o.nouncements on a supplementary leaf. He slips this appendix onto a couple of pegs and stacks the original four leaves on top of it. The holes line up, but he seems to cut his leaves slightly larger than the standard two-by-eight-inches, or Hanumarathnam cut his smaller: the edge of the update leaf protrudes as though the little-known local garnished and trimmed Hanumarathnam's predictions, readied them to be served.

The brothers return with long faces. Sivakami, scooping rice onto a plate in the kitchen, hears her eldest brother, Sambu, telling his wife, "She's got a tough one."

The wives are not ill-intentioned, but the eagerness of their concern is evident as they ask, "What-what does it say?"

Sivakami pauses to listen to Sambu's reply.

"It says... whoever she marries, he's going to die young."

"Ayoh!" The exclamation comes from Kamu, Sambu's wife.

Meenu, the second, echoes her, muttering, "Ayoh, ayoh." She shakes her head and whispers, "Young widow."